Chapter 12 #2
Her laugh dissolves into a groan as I dip my head and take her nipple into my mouth.
Her back arches off the mattress, and her hands are in my hair again, gripping hard, pulling me closer.
The taste of her skin is clean and warm, and underneath, the faint aroma of the soap I put in her bathroom.
I've been longing for this moment since the night I swapped that bar and stood in the hallway with my forehead against the wall.
I take my time with her. I learn her sounds. The sharp hitch when I kiss the underside of her breast. The low, shuddering exhale when my mouth moves down her ribs. The full-body tremor when I press my lips to the patch of eczema below her navel, the most hidden one, the one nobody has ever seen.
“You're shaking,” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m touching you, and it's the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Her hand finds my face and cups my jaw, tilting me up to look at her. Behind her glasses, her eyes are dark and unguarded. There are no exits, no calculations—just Jenna.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says.
I bury my face in her stomach and breathe. Her fingers stroke through my hair, and for ten precious seconds, I’m no longer the caretaker, protector, or the man who holds everything together. I'm simply a man being touched by the woman he loves, and it’s enough to crack me open.
I hook my fingers into her underwear. “Still okay?”
“Ethan, if you don’t take those off in the next three seconds, I’m going to do it myself, and I won’t be as graceful about it.”
I pull them down her legs. She’s bare. Completely bare. Pale skin and dark hair and the vulnerable softness of a woman who’s never been looked at like this. I kneel between her thighs and just... look.
Her hands grip the sheets. “You’re staring.”
“I’m memorizing.”
“Memorize faster.”
“No.”
I lower my head. The first press of my mouth against her slickness draws a sound from her throat that I will remember every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life.
Her hips jerk, her hand flies to my hair, and her thighs close around my head like she’s trying to hold me there while simultaneously pushing me away.
I stay. I will always stay.
She tastes like salt and warmth and something I can only describe as mine. I take my time learning her. When my tongue teases her pulsing entrance, she gasps. When it slides deeply through her soft folds, she moans. When I seal my mouth over her clit and pull gently, she shatters.
Not quietly. Not carefully. Jenna Calloway, who has been careful her entire life, comes apart under my mouth with a cry that she doesn’t muffle, doesn’t apologize for, and doesn’t try to take back.
I work her through it, slowing when she shakes, pressing soft kisses against her inner thighs as the aftershocks roll through her. Her hand is still in my hair, her grip loosening, her breathing ragged.
“Oh,” she gasps. “Oh.”
I press one more kiss against her inner thigh, where the skin is softest, and climb back up her body.
Her face is flushed, her glasses fogged at the edges, and her expression is the one I’ve been waiting for since the day I carried her from that ditch: a woman who has stopped calculating the risks and is simply, fully, here.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.” She laughs, breathless and dazed. “That was—”
“Step one.”
Her eyes are wide as she removes her glasses. “There are steps? You said there weren’t steps.”
“I lied.”
She pulls me down and kisses me. The low hum of surprise and desire she makes when she tastes herself on my mouth almost finishes me.
I shed the rest of my clothes. She watches, and I let her because she gave me her body without armor, and she deserves the same. Her gaze tracks down my chest and my stomach to my cock. Her lips part.
“You’ve been hiding that behind a toolbox?” she murmurs.
“What?”
“Nothing. Come here.”
I settle between her thighs. The skin-to-skin contact, with nothing between us, punches the breath from both of us. She’s slick and warm, and I’m so hard it hurts. Every cell in my body screams at me to move, to push, to take.
But I don’t move.
“This might hurt,” I say, hating the words even as I say them.
“I know.” She cradles my face, forcing me to look at her. “I trust you.”
Those three words feel more intimate than anything we’ve shared tonight.
I press forward slowly. So slowly that my arms shake with the effort of holding back. She’s tight. I feel the resistance and stop.
“Breathe, Jen.”
She breathes. Her body adjusts. I press deeper, inch by inch, watching her face for any sign of pain. There’s a flicker, a crease between her brows, a bitten lip. Then her expression smooths. Her mouth opens, and her eyes widen.
“Oh,” she whispers. “That’s...”
“Yeah.”
“You’re...”
I grit my teeth. “Fuck, yeah.”
She pulls me closer, pressing her heels into the backs of my thighs and takes the last inch herself.
My forehead drops to hers. I’m completely inside her, and the room has reduced to the sound of our breathing and the place where our bodies meet and the impossible, devastating fact that I am Jenna Calloway’s first, and she is mine in every way that matters.
I hold still. Not because I want to—God, not because I want to—but because this moment is hers, and I won’t take a second of it away.
“Move,” she whispers. “Please.”
I move.
Slow. A long, deliberate withdrawal followed by a deep return that makes her gasp and grab my shoulders.
I set a steady, patient rhythm—built for endurance, built for her.
Her body learns mine quickly, adjusting and optimizing, and within moments, she’s meeting every thrust, rolling her hips to match my pace.
Her sounds change. Quiet gasps turn into moans, and the moans deepen, while her fingers drag down my back hard enough to leave marks I’ll wear like medals.
“Faster,” she breathes.
I give her faster. The bed protests beneath us, but I don’t care. She wraps her arms and legs around me, holding on the way she held onto my jacket in the dark. Not clinging, but anchoring.
“Look at me.”
Her gaze meets mine, and I feel it everywhere—like a spark under my skin. Heat gathers low in my body, pressure building where we’re joined, underneath me, around me, with me in the most fundamental way two people can be with each other.
“You’re mine,” I say brokenly. “You know that.”
“I know.” Her voice cracks. “You’re mine too.”
I drop my forehead to hers and lose myself. My rhythm falters, going harder, deeper, chasing the pull building low in my spine. She’s close again. I can feel it in the way she tightens around me, the way her breathing fractures.
“Let go, Jen,” I murmur. “I’ve got you.”
She lets go.
She comes with my name on her lips, her body pulling tight around mine, and the sound of my name in her wrecked, unguarded voice drags me over the edge after her. I bury my face in her neck, coming hard, my vision flashing white as everything in me gives out.
We lie tangled. Her heartbeat hammers against my chest. We’re a wreck of sweat and trembling limbs and blurry vision, and I’ve never been more at peace in my life.
Her fingers drift over my shoulder, slow and absent, as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with all of this either.
“So that’s what the fuss is about,” she murmurs.
A laugh cracks out of me. I roll to my side and pull her against my chest. She fits against my body the way she fits into everything—completely. As if she were always supposed to be there and fate was just waiting for her to arrive.
“Jen.”
“Mmm?”
“You okay?”
She lifts her head. Her eyes are bright and wrecked and the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since she walked down that aisle. “I’m so far past okay that I need a new word for it.”
I kiss her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. The patch on her collarbone.
“Stay,” I murmur against her skin. The truest thing I’ve ever said.
She shifts closer, warm and bare and completely here with me. “I already am.”
I press one more kiss to her mouth before slipping out of bed, grabbing a washcloth from the bathroom. When I come back, she watches me—quiet, a little dazed—as I clean her gently, careful with her in a way I don’t think about. It just… happens.
Then I slide back under the covers with her.
Jenna drapes her leg over mine, her face nestled in the curve of my neck, the warm scent of us enveloping the dark. My hand glides up and down her spine, devoid of any agenda, just touch, just presence.
“I used to hang up and hold the phone against my chest,” she says into the darkness. “Like I could keep you there. I’d press it flat against my sternum, and sometimes I’d fall asleep like that. With a phone on my chest because it was the closest thing I had to you.”
I did the same thing. Every night. Her voice followed by silence, then the phone against my chest, like a borrowed heartbeat.
She shifts, reaching across me toward the nightstand. I still when she brings my glasses back. Something in me quiets in a way I don’t fully understand.
She slides them on carefully, tucking the arms behind my ears, her thumbs brushing along my temples. No one has ever done this. At least, not like this.
My gaze meets hers.
“There you are,” she whispers.
Something in my chest gives.
She doesn’t mean the glasses.
She means me. The parts of myself that I don’t let other people see.
I pull her back in, pressing my mouth to her hair, holding her close. My breathing is uneven now—not from before, but from this.
From how much this means.
I’m smiling before I even open my eyes.
Morning.
Jenna is spread across my chest, her head tucked under my chin, her breath warming my throat.
Her phone buzzes on the nightstand, a single vibration. I reach for it instinctively, still surfacing from the best sleep I’ve ever had.
Unknown number.
I know where you are, Jenna. We should talk about what you took.
My smile fades.
Everything inside me goes still.
Jenna’s arm tightens around me, an unconscious pull, even in sleep, like she knows I’m here. Like she needs me here.
I don’t move.
I just hold the phone and stare at the screen, every instinct sharpening at once.
The storm isn’t coming.
It’s already here.